So the United States is entering financial turmoil, what with all of our banks collapsing and the world's largest insurance company needing a bailout from the State of New York and the stock market tumbling and thousands of fancy jobs on the line. Honestly, though, let's get to the heart of the matter: will this news secretly (or openly!) thrill political partisans? It seems, on its face, that news of Wall Street turmoil helps Senator Barack Obama. And why not? The initial careful ventures into political exploitation of this maybe-catastrophe are already underway. How will it play out? How To Attack Josh Marshall tosses out a readymade almost-true attack line: "The man most responsible for the financial services and banking deregulation that made today possible, fmr. Sen. Phil Gramm, is the man John McCain wants to put in charge of the whole economy." Ok. The "man most responsible" part is defensible, if exaggerated. Gramm deregulated the hell out of the banking sector as a senator. And he lobbied for lax oversight of predatory lending as vice chairman of UBS's i-banking arm. The "man McCain wants to put in charge of the whole economy" bit seems a little less true. We don't know who the hell McCain would let run things. McCain does love Gramm, and Gramm taught McCain everything he needs to know about the economy. McCain's limited grasp of economics basically consists of Gramm's strict anti-regulation philosophies with a bit of pandering to the middle class tossed in. But Gramm is McCain's former campaign co-chair. All signs point to a bigger role played by the less unpopular Carly Fiorina handling the economy in a McCain presidency, even if Gramm's ideas rule the day. Still. That's the kind of fact-checking that gets us nowhere! It's a fine line to use: McCain doesn't get the economy, and the guy he has around to explain it to him is personally responsible for this mess. Some variation on that line will probably be repeated by the Obama campaign over the next week. (Obama has already siezed on a mostly innocuous McCain remark—way to adapt, guys!) Watch Your Own Ties But here are some of the potential pitfalls for Obama. This bit of trivia has already made it to Politico:

In this time of economic woe, those of us stranded in the middle and lower classes aren't circling the wagons, trying to protect what little stake we've left. Instead we're looking at those people far across the income gap—the fantastic private jet-having super rich—congratulating and emulating them and waving them to greener shores while we stand dumbly on the docks. Or so argues Alessandra Stanley in a Times trend piece today, using the new hyper-moneyed 90210 as a springboard. You see those kids aren't just rich like they might have been on such a show thirty years ago, with a sports car and a nice haircut. In this "new," cash-obsessed post-Reagan era, your typical rich kids are Aaron Spelling rich. With like private planes and hugely expensive birthday parties and $800 just-because! friend presents. Even the new kids in town—fresh from storied rube-mill Kansas!—don't live in a humble shack. No, they live in a big stucco mansion with their prodigal rich kid dad, their fashionista mother, and their boozy former actress of a grandmother. That's the new poor! Same goes for the humble Humphreys on the east coast money fest Gossip Girl who, as the penniless kids in town, live in a modestly sprawling DUMBO loft with their former rockstar, gallery owner dad. Our fascination with bank accounts not our own represents some kind of political pandemic, Stanley argues:

Packing their bindles, cutting the fingers off their gloves, and can-opener-ing the tops of their top hats, the family of humble talk show host Oprah Winfrey is desperately heading for the boxcars, which they'll ride to the sweet misty mysterious hills of West Virginia to live as vagabond hill-hobos until their whimsical, harmonica-tuned, moonshine-soaked deaths. Yes the family is in financial ruin, as evidenced by their being sued by a Wisconsin clothing store over an unpaid $155,000 debt run up by Winfrey's mother, Vernita Lee. She was supposed to pay in $2000 increments, but she didn't for some reason. Why this is remotely news—because surely Winfrey could take off one of her sensible loafers and shake out that much in Sacagaweas and settle this unseemly matter right away—is kind of beyond us, but at least it's not politics!

So we're a little late to the game on this, but salaries for each of The Hills' principles were recently leaked by In Touch and now we've got a handy dandy chart! (Made by our Photoshop whiz Steven Dressler.) Look at their big dumb heads! It's like some sort of hell-crafted Mt. Rushmore! And look, as the sizes get smaller, how much more we're actually "interested." I'd watch a whole show of Lo and Whitney (but not Brody. Never, ever Brody)! Though I am curious about someone like Spencerina, Spencer's dimbulb sister? Does she get paid or is she-Clint Howard-esque-just allowed to hang around the set, getting nothing more than a free sandwich each day?

Everyone's always been miserable, except when they're watching rich people. As if previously operating under the crazy idea that people watch television to see their own lives reflected back at them, television writers today are all a-tizzy about the amount of shows about rich people, scratching their heads and wondering why, in this time of foreclosures and defaulted mortgages and soaring gas prices, anyone would want to watch something about people with overabundances of money. Their theory is that shows like Gossip Girl, Dirty Sexy Money, Lipstick Jungle, and the upcoming CW series 90210 and Privileged all create wish-fulfillment in mostly hopeless times. And, um yeah!, they're right!

Like some sort of real-life Gargamel (a single, balding man who lived alone with his cat), Stuart Ross, who brought the extremely gay cartoon show The Smurfs to these American shores, has been arrested for extortion. He was trying to bilk his son-in-law out of millions of dollars, threatening to ruin his reputation with some questionable emails or something. Then he cackled and scarfed down some Smurf berries and desperately tried to work up the courage to ask Vanity Smurf-or, you know, that guy Donald who's a piano teacher and has kind eyes that lives down the hall-out on a date.

You think NBC is making a good return on its investment for these Olympics? You don't even know what a good return is. NBC had to bid for these Olympic rights in an auction, and they ended up paying more than $1.5 billion for the most recent summer and winter games. But how much did CCTV, the national broadcast network in China, pay for the money-minting opportunity to carry the games in its home country? (Hint: there's nobody for them to bid against):

Al Gore's incredibly expensive campaign to solve the climate crisis by enriching the advertising industry is still going strong! The Gore-backed WeCanSolveIt.org is running a new ad, and it unfortunately embodies the traits of its sponsor: off-putting earnestness and a befuddling message in support of a worthy cause. This one features various Americans staring creepily into the camera while slogans flash, informing politicians that we "demand" that they "use the wind" to stop global warming or something. A tenth of Gore's $300 million budget spent directly on lobbying would accomplish much more than these ads ever will. Environmentalists have all the good weed-is this as creative as they can get? Watch the Gore-like spot after the jump:

Despite an absence of any "news," every political magazine and newspaper is rushing to publish special "St. Paul and Denver" editions for the political conventions. CQ, Roll Call, and The Hill are publishing on-site daily! Politico will be there! Local papers are throwing everything they have at the event! National Journal expects big things! Meanwhile, all the high-powered attendees will be getting drunk and occasionally checking the New York Times on their iPhones, and the smart reporters just stay home and make shit up. The real reason for the outpouring of journalistic effort:

Oh Chace Crawford, you greedy, hopefully gay prat. The Gossip Girl looker, who plays pampered rich boy Nate Archibald, has left ICM for CAA, hoping that their stable of high-powered, wicked agents can get him a bigger salary for the laughably stiff (ohhh) acting he does on the low-rated CW (hardly even a network!) show. He's looking for a "substantial raise," according to well-vetted hearsay. A substantial raise? From "here kid, now you're famous and we'll pay you a few thou while we're at it" to what? How much more could a glorified My First Twink™ blow-up sex doll expect? Maybe his next project, the sure-to-be smash hit The Haunting of Molly Hartley will solidify his place in the pantheon of forever-famous pin-up pretty teen-soap boys. Like Shane McDermott. You remember him, right?

TV Guide has released its annual list of television star salaries, and unsurprisingly it's a complete embarrassment of riches. What is surprising in a grim chuckle of a way is that Charlie Sheen, he of the hookers and blow and Hot Shots movies, is the highest paid actor on television, earning some $825,000 for each weekly episode of his tremendously unfunny sitcom Two and a Half Men. How the hell did that happen? Well, we know how it happened. THM has been inexplicably popular for years now, outlasting other numbnuts shouldn't-have-been-hits like According to Jim and Yes, Dear. What we really want to know is why did it happen? What is with Sheen's sheen? Maybe it has something to do with his hang-dog, "what can I say?" demeanor these days. Sheen doesn't so much apologize for being a ludicrous fuck-up for so many years, rather he's just pressing his two index fingers together, twirling one foot on the ground and saying "I've been bad, bad boy." And, I guess, people it eat up. And it fits right in with THM, which is well-intended stupidity-not nearly as hard to pick up as those more "complicated" or "weird" shows like The Office or 30 Rock. Another part of Sheen's enduring fame/popularity probably has something to do with the tabloid bolero of Sheen and his ex-wife, famous naked lady Denise Richards. She got the bulk of the negative press during their split, leaving Sheen to seem the weary, put-upon old druggie who just can't catch a break, man. (Add to that people's outrage over how handsomely Richards continues to profit from the divorce.) People seem to detect Richards' blind ambition and dislike it while they tolerate and even enjoy Sheen's affable (if at times violent and unstable) blundering. There's probably some sophomore gender studies paper to write about this, but it's summer. So just take it like this: Charlie Sheen is ridiculously rich and you are not. There you go.

Attached is a 100% real screengrab of recent transactions from your day editor's checking account. The two debits here are from an MTA New York City transit MetroCard vending machine. Actually two card machines, because the first one didn't work. And neither did the second one! There were no posted notices anywhere, but apparently it's a system-wide outage—no MTA kiosk can process any debit or credit card transactions, as a Service Alert that was just posted online this morning kind of hints at. (And now that service alert is gone!) But—as you can see—you will still be charged for trying. Ha ha ha. The MTA claims accounts will be credited after two business days, but hey, sucks to be you if you end up with an overdraft charge after you try two or three machines, right?

It's a well-known fact that the monkeys have been plotting against us since the days of yore. But their terrible plans will get sped up quite horribly once they've mastered the skill of banking. That's right. Someone's been teaching the little hellions how to use money! "[O]ne can get some clues as to how evolution prepared us for money from the burgeoning research that seeks to present animals with economic choices. To gain perspective on human financial decisions, one may ask, what would monkeys do?Keith Chen and Marc Hauser at Yale University taught monkeys about resources that bear a strong resemblance to money. Monkeys don't care about money, per se, but they do care about marshmallows."

Sober rocker Courtney Love posted an open letter to her myspace page last night, in which she charges that fellow musical mess Ryan Adams had something to do with stealing "858,00$" from her-and from daughter Frances Bean Cobain. Let's all try to make sense of it together, shall we?

Just in case you've been hiking the Appalachian trail for the past seven months, there's this movie called The Dark Knight coming out today. It's a Batman movie, he of the cowl and the scowl, and it features his most nefarious foe, the Joker. That slithering baddie is played by Heath Ledger, an actor of beguiling good looks and talent who died-tragically, accidentally, hugely-in January. But his performance in this film lives on, and it's said to be the stuff of legend. Critics have been slamming their shoes on their desks for the past week, heralding it as "revelatory" and Brando-esque. The strength of this performance presented Warner Bros., months ago, with something of a conundrum. Should they continue plans to make his leering visage the movie's chief marketing image, or should they shy away from death, retreating to the simultaneously brighter and dimmer lights of Christian Bale and his boringer friends? Ultimately they chose to continue with their Joker-centric media deluge, and people got very angry! How dare they?! The man is dead, reduced to mere ashes floating in the Indian Ocean! It's immoral. And to that, we say bullshit.

It was good to see stalwart judge Nina Garcia on Project Runway last night, especially after all the foofaraw about her fashion director position at Elle magazine. As the show has tie-ins with Elle, if poor Nina got completely muscled out of that job, her PR gig could have disappeared as well. Luckily that didn't happen. She's still "working" for Elle as long as this season is taping, but she's basically dunzo. To that end, she was embarrassingly introduced as an "Editor-at-Large" for Elle on the show , which we all know is a bullshit title. So sad! Poor Nina! Though, don't feel too bad. The woman is getting paid thousands for public "celebrity" appearances.

This... is odd. UK newspaper company Guardian Media Group just bought a blog! For more than $30 million! (To be fair, that's like 10 million quid now probably, but still.) The blog is paidContent; it covers dry internet media news and chronicles lots of important business-y stuff involving "digital media." It's a very nice site, but $30 million? While media stocks tank? For a site whose revenue comes from, like, bankers making money off media deals? Ok, Guardian! It's your money! But there's more good news: this deal will annoy Jason Calacanis!

Cara Carleton "Carly" Fiorina (née Sneed) (thanks Wikipedia!) used to be the most powerful woman in business, back when she was running HP. She ran HP into the ground, btw, forcing a deadly merger with Compaq, laying off 7,000 people, losing market share to Dell and IBM, and finally being forced out by the board. She received a ridiculous $21 million cash severance payment (breaking the company's own severance cap) and she also somehow received a reputation as someone to be taken seriously in matters of business. Now her job is to convince people that John McCain is business-friendly and knowledgeable about money in general. America! Lloyd Grove interviewed her for Portfolio. This is our favorite quote:

While the merely superrich have been unable to sell or buy homes in the Hamptons for some time now, the mega-rich have continued purchasing giant estates for absurd prices. But as Vanity Fair explains, no more! Now there is precisely one man rich enough to buy a Southhampton property for an insanely inflated price, and he is the man who predicted and bet on the subprime crisis taking the toll it has. Now former Bear Stearns employees are worried about their mortgages, JUST LIKE REAL POOR PEOPLE, and it's all very, very, very sad. Listen to just how sad it is!

Oh look. A new show about rich people. It's certainly not a new TV meme, but there's just so much of it these days. What with the Real Housewives and the Gossip Girls and the Super Sweet sixteen-year-olds. One might begin to think there was some sort of canyon-sized poverty gap growing in this country of ours. This newest entry in the genre is about a young writer who takes a job tutoring two spoiled rich heiresses and blah blah blah, people swim in money. The show is slated to be on the CW, where Gossip Girl is housed, this fall. So tune in on your non-flat television set, pour a glass of Fish Eye from a box, and feel terribly, terribly impoverished. It's a good thing poor people just aren't that interesting. A promo clip for the show awaits you after the jump.